Functionalization of high-extension surfaces for cell culture

近年来，组织工程（人工活组织的生产）领域发展迅速，但在医院常规使用之前仍存在许多技术障碍。 组织工程师面临的一个主要问题是，为了从小的活检组织中制造大块组织（例如，替换某人软骨中的“洞”），他们需要从活检组织中提取细胞，繁殖细胞，然后让细胞产生一个新的，相对较大的组织。 用于增殖细胞的标准方法并不非常适合于此目的。 这是因为大多数类型的组织工程感兴趣的细胞只能通过在平坦表面上生长来繁殖。 当它们填满可用空间时，需要将它们移除并放置在新的表面上以继续繁殖。 这种去除过程会破坏细胞，并且需要大量的人力。我们最近设计并制造了一种在高度可拉伸的表面上培养细胞的装置。 该装置提供的细胞培养表面可以增加10倍。 因此，当细胞生长时，可以为它们提供更多的空间，而不需要将它们从表面移除。 预计这将具有重要的优势，包括生产更高质量的细胞以改善组织工程。 然而，仍有许多工作要做，以改善细胞和这个高度可变形的表面之间的相互作用。 该提案旨在探索优化细胞在这些表面上附着和生长的方式的几种选择，以产生用于组织工程的最佳细胞。 主要的方法将涉及对可拉伸表面的化学改性。 因此，这项工作的结果将有助于开发一种令人兴奋的新技术，这种技术可能会彻底改变人们培养细胞用于许多不同生物和医学应用的方式。

In recent years, the field of tissue engineering (production of artificial living tissues) has grown rapidly, but many technical barriers remain before it can be used routinely in hospitals. A major problem for tissue engineers is that in order to make large pieces of tissue from small biopsies (for example, to replace a "hole" in someone's cartilage), they need to extract cells from the biopsy, multiply the cells, and then allow the cells to produce a new, relatively large piece tissue. Standard methods for multiplying cells are not very well adapted for this purpose. This is because most types of cells of interest for tissue engineering can only be multiplied by growing them on a flat surface. When they fill up the available space, they need to be removed and placed on a new surface to continue multiplying. This removal process is damaging to cells, and requires a lot of manpower. We recently designed and built a device for culturing cells on highly stretchable surfaces. This device provides a cell culture surface which can be increased by 10 times. Therefore, more space can be provided to cells as they grow, without the need to remove them from the surface. This is expected to have important advantages, including the production of higher quality cells for improved tissue engineering. However, much work must still be done to improve the interactions between cells and this highly deformable surface. This proposal aims to explore several options for optimizing the ways that cells attach and grow on these surfaces, in order to produce the best possible cells for tissue engineering. The main approaches will involve chemical modifications to the stretchable surface. Results from this work will therefore contribute to the development of an exciting new technology that may revolutionize the way that people culture cells for many different biological and medical applications.